Crown Heights Restaurateur Starts Quest For 10 Community Fridges

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — The way Ty Brown sees it, the best way to get an idea off the ground, is to do it yourself.

That's why when the Crown Heights restaurateur heard about a community fridge in the Lower East Side, the site of his newest eatery, he wasted no time in figuring out how to bring the idea to his own neighborhood.

Within days, he had two new refrigerators sitting in his Brooklyn restaurants, ready to be filled with food. The community fridges will open to the public on Feb. 1.

"For me, ideas don't stay ideas for long," Brown told Patch.

But Brown said he also knows that to make an idea last, it takes a village.

The two fridges at his own restaurants — The Bergen and Brooklyn Fish Tank — are the start of a larger project to bring 10 community refrigerators to Crown Heights.

"I like to do it on my own first and then be able to say, 'I have this project going, would you like to help out?'" Brown said. "People like to see it and feel [something] tangible."

The Crown Heights Community Fridges project, launched last week, is searching for what Brown calls "sponsors, partners and volunteers" for each of the eight remaining refrigerators, which he is buying through a discount with a local refrigerator repairman.

Partners will come in the form of neighbors who want to help scout out locations or spread the word, while sponsors will be business owners who volunteer to host the fridge and add food for it to their shopping lists, Brown said. Volunteers will sign up to clean, maintain and add to the donations.

"My goal is to get these fridges full," Brown said. "We want to be a blessing to the community."

Each fridge will be set up with a code on its door for those who want to donate through Venmo, Pay Pal or other services. They will be monitored through the project's Facebook page, where neighbors can check when each is refilled and what supplies are inside.

Each fridge location will also each likely include a small cabinet for dry goods. Brown said he plans to find youth groups who might want to fill those cabinets with care packages of diapers, toiletries or other supplies.

The fridges, which are not the first in the neighborhood, will hopefully make it so no Crown Heights resident lives too far from the community resource.

"Normally, it's about getting by — what will get me by Monday until Friday," Brown said of the neighborhood's needs. "This fridge can very much service those who don't have the resources to get by."

Kings County — which already had 14 percent of its residents struggling to find food before the pandemic — was projected to reach 20 percent food insecurity in 2020. Community fridges have also popped up in Bed-Stuy and on Lincoln Place in the last year.

Those interested in helping can join the Crown Heights Community Fridges' Facebook page or call Brown's restaurants, The Bergen and Brooklyn Fish Tank, to learn more.

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